Grapes near Canandaigua Lake in the Finger Lakes. (Photo: UncorkNY.com)

The Atlantic, long a bastion of intellectual, thought-provoking essays and fiction for the Eastern egghead set, has discovered … wait for it … that wine is actually made along the Atlantic seaboard! Good wine, at that. Gosh, imagine. The headline: “New York’s Finger Lakes: The Next Great Wine Region in America?” shows a gee whiz sense of naivete that has my head shaking. Haven’t they been reading New York Cork Report all these years? Okay – all snark aside, Caroline Helper has actually written a very nice article that hits all the right notes, from the locavore-locapour conundrum to the historical and current legal environment affecting the industry’s growth. Most likely, she didn’t write the headline, and if she has convinced The Atlantic to begin covering regional wine, then kudos to her.

In Zester Daily, Patrick Comiskey profiles his neighborhood wine bar, Lou, which has been a darling of the natural wine set. Never been there? Read this and you’ll feel like a regular, and, like Comiskey, regret that owner Lou Amdur has chosen to move on. (Hat-tip: Terroirist.)

Robert Parker’s investigation of Campogate – the alleged shopping of Wine Advocate writer Jay Miller by Spanish wine figure Pancho Campo – has been released. The findings probably surprise no one: That nobody did anything illegal or improper, but that Wine Advocate’s reputation was hurt by the appearance of a conflict of interest. The report is available on Jim’s Loire, the blog that broke the story last fall; several other posts provide analysis, though all this writer-upon-writer violence is beginning to be discomforting, like watching someone lick a drip of wine off the neck of a bottle.